Noted legal scholars create Robert E. and Elizabeth S. Scott Research Professorship in Law School

Two alumni who are noted legal scholars—Board of Visitors member and William & Mary Law School graduate Robert E. Scott and his wife, Elizabeth S. Scott,
a graduate of the College of William & Mary—were honored at a
Sept. 22 reception in the Wren Building for their generosity in creating
a new research chair in law. During the celebration, Michael Steven Green was recognized as the first scholar to be designated as the Robert E. and Elizabeth S. Scott Research Professor of Law.

In his remarks, William & Mary President Taylor Reveley said that
the Scotts' creation of the research professorship was especially
meaningful since it was made by two "highly acclaimed law professors and
scholars." Robert Scott is the Alfred McCormack Professor at Columbia
Law School, a former dean of the University of Virginia School of Law,
and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Elizabeth
Scott is the Harold R. Medina Professor at Columbia Law School. She
taught previously at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she
was founder and co-director of the interdisciplinary Center for
Children, Families and the Law.

Law School Dean Davison M. Douglas recalled that as a newly appointed
dean he turned for advice to Robert Scott, who he considered one of the
"great law school deans of the twentieth century ... and one of the
great commercial law scholars in the United States." Scott, he
recalled, had shared with him the perspective that research chairs are
essential to attract and to reward outstanding faculty and to advance
"the scholarly mission of a law school."

Green, the first member of the law faculty to be designated a Scott
Research Professor, completed his undergraduate work at the University
of California at Berkeley and then earned a J.D. and Ph.D. (Philosophy)
at Yale University. Before entering the legal academy, he taught in the
Philosophy Department at Tufts University and later practiced law at
Paul Weiss in New York City. A member of the law faculty since 2006, he
is a noted Nietzsche scholar and also is widely published in areas such
as legal philosophy and civil procedure. Elizabeth Scott praised
Green's selection as the first to hold the new research chair. It was
impressive, she said, "to look at [Green's] scholarly accomplishments in
really such as relatively short career as a legal academic."

Robert Scott said he was confident that Green walked in the footsteps
of another great law professor, Dudley Woodbridge, who taught law at
William & Mary for 39 years.

"My first-year contracts class with Dean Woodbridge was, and remains
to this day, the most intellectually stimulating and engaging experience
of my entire life," Scott said. "His charismatic teaching and his
rigorous scholarly devotion to the truth quite fundamentally and
importantly changed my life forever. And so this research chair idea ...
is specifically designed to nurture and support exemplars of just that
sort of excellence. I know that there are students today in Michael
Green's first-year civil procedure class whose lives and careers will be
shaped for the better just as mine were some forty years ago."

Green, in addition to thanking the Scotts for their generosity, said
that he had ampleevidence that they are greatly esteemed by their
colleagues and former students. Since adding the designation of Scott
Research Professor to his email signature and publications, he said he
has received many emails in which people have expressed their "love and
admiration" for the couple.